It’s much like any other intimate eatery, except that, unusually, it’s found in the host’s sitting room and she’s the head chef.

Going underground: Jupiter’s beatnik restauranted is in his sitting room

Explaining the merits of eating at this cosy evening soirée in a stranger’s home, Foodrambler says: ‘Firstly, you don’t get food envy as it’s always a set meal. Also, I’m pretty nosey and like glimpsing into other people’s lives.’

The Underground Restaurant is not a one-off however. Horton Jupiter’s own gastro-club, The Secret Ingredient, with its beatnik clientele of twenty and thirty-somethings, has been running every Wednesday since the turn of the year.

‘For my first one I cooked a nine-course Japanese feast. I’m a lapsed vegetarian but this is a vegetarian fixed menu,’ explains the 29-year-old musician (pictured below), whose housemates put up with his new addiction.

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Setting the scene, Jupiter continues: ‘It is quite surreal. People sit at different tables and get dressed up as if they’re going out but to come to my sitting room.’

So serious has it all become – think that wickedly addictive TV programme, Come Dine With Me, without the scoring – he has invested in mirror tiles to serve starters on. ‘Radishes, chopped into little grids, look amazing on them,’ he says.

Mad, free-spirited or perhaps just very trusting, these armchair-chefs don’t get paid; guests just make donations towards grub.

So what has inspired this fast-growing trend? ‘What inspired me was a book, This Diary Will Change Your Life,’ says Jupiter.

‘The book is quite anarchic. For example, it tells you to swear for a week. Then it said, ‘This week open up your sitting room to crowds.’ I did it and now it’s taken on a life of its own.’

Foodrambler – by day, Abi Anderson, a 29-year-old who works in legal publishing – adds: ‘People don’t make a profit. That’s what is special, they are inspired by a sheer passion for food.’

Ever in-the-know on this particular subject, she says the concept is not entirely new: ‘American foodie Jim Haynes did it in Paris so it’s been around for a bit but not in Britain.’ In Cuba, sitting room diners, paladares, are also the norm.

Back in Britain, probably the best way to find one is to be a hip scenester and know hip people, or even better, set up your own.

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To host one, all you need is a love of cooking – and a waiter; Ms Marmite has her teenage goth daughter serving her French dishes, while Jupiter borrows his girlfriend. There is etiquette to consider, too.

‘When a reviewer came over, I kept swearing in the kitchen. It’s stressful,’ chuckles Jupiter. Indeed, it is hard graft.

‘You work from noon getting the courses ready and you don’t finish washing up until one in the morning,’ says Jupiter, who feeds 16 people per sitting.

Then there are the raving nutters to ponder. ‘I have had some,’ says Jupiter. ‘But most of them are friends.’ Foodrambler adds: ‘You’re opening your home and giving people that trust. People are more likely to respect it and not abuse it.’

Jupiter, bewildered by his newfound fame – the club already has more than 220 fans on Facebook – muses: ‘It is a bit weird that a secret dinner has become a frisson to us all. We must have run out of underground things to do.’